Abstract
Public health is an oft-used illustration of market failure and of the necessity of governmental action to overcome such failure. Covid-19 is just the latest in a continuing series of claims of market failure that are alleged to require solution by politically selected experts. Without doubt, Covid-19 presents problems of public health; however, solution of those problems is a complex matter of social organization and not a simple matter of selecting the right expert. Subduing Covid-19 will require expertise provided by the scientific disciplines related to public health, but it will require more than that. As for how much more, I build upon Michael Polanyi’s (1962) articulation of a Republic of Science to explain that subduing Covid-19 is better accomplished when there is free and open competition among ideas and approaches, in contrast to the closed and limited competition that characterizes our present system of entangled political economy.
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